


Dee Thought We Couldn't Get Her But We Got Her

by tannoreth



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Gen, anyway i'm not tagging my friends as characters, this is going in the dnd tag because i don't know where else to put it but uh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-13
Updated: 2014-03-13
Packaged: 2018-01-15 14:45:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1308673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tannoreth/pseuds/tannoreth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Your friends are in danger!”</p><p>Dee looked up from behind the desk. She adjusted her glasses and peered suspiciously at the hooded and cloaked person standing in front of her. “I’m sorry, what?”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dee Thought We Couldn't Get Her But We Got Her

“Your friends are in danger!”

Dee looked up from behind the desk. She adjusted her glasses and peered suspiciously at the hooded and cloaked person standing in front of her. “I’m sorry, what?”

He drew the cloak more tightly around his body and croaked, “Your friends are imprisoned by the evil Sorcerer Arndt in the old castle! You are the hero chosen to go rescue them. You must begin your quest immediately.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. True, she had heard that Sorcerer Arndt had been particularly terrorizing the countryside lately, but – “What the hell would he want with my friends? And why do I have to go rescue them? Maybe I’d just go notify the police and they could dispatch a team trained in hostage situations. Of course I want them rescued – assuming they’re even in danger at all and you aren’t doing this to get me off duty so you can steal some rare books – but I _don’t_ think the local librarian is usually the first person you ask to rescue people from evil sorcerers. And who are you anyway, how would you know something like this? That seems suspicious too.”

“Uh,” said the figure. Dee crossed her arms.

“Well,” said the figure, and drew himself further into the cloak. Dee worried he might disappear entirely soon if he kept withdrawing like that. “The police will not listen! There is no evidence to suggest where they have disappeared to. Furthermore…” He seemed to consider for a moment, then tossed an envelope onto Dee’s desk. “Here is a letter from Sorcerer Arndt proving that he has kidnapped your friends.”

She frowned up at him, then said, “You’d think that would be the first thing to show me,” took the letter, and opened it. Making sure she didn’t take her eyes off of him for more than a few seconds at a time – this still felt like a plot to steal books – she scanned the letter.

 _Deanna the Librarian,_ it read.

_I am holding Ashley, Emily, Shad, and Sara captive until one who is worthy can rescue them. But make haste! Things will only get worse if you wait too long to come find them._

_Sorcerer Arndt_

Her stomach dropped as she read it. This was more information than anyone who just wanted to steal books and thought “a long cloak and hood” was a proper disguise could possibly have.

“Who are you,” she snapped. “How did you get this letter. What’s happened to my friends. Why is Sorcerer Arndt targeting me. _What’s going on?!”_

“It does not matter who I am,” he said. “What matters is who you are – you must live up to the hero that your friends need right now.”

“But I’m not a hero!” Dee said. “I’m just a librarian, that’s not hero material, that’s barely supporting character material.”

“You must become whatever you are destined to be,” he croaked, and then turned and fled out the door.

“Don’t I get a legendary sword or something, then?” she said sharply, but the hooded man had vanished.

Dee blinked at the closing door and then down at the letter again. It certainly seemed plausible from this evidence. Whatever the cloaked man was on about, she wasn’t a hero, but maybe she could go talk to Sorcerer Arndt. If she was good at anything, it was words, and she heard the sorcerer liked to talk. Maybe she could trap him out somehow and get him to agree to let her friends go.

It was the best chance she had. Hurriedly, she packed up her bag – pen and paper,   and her lunch. Not exactly the supplies of a legendary hero, but they were what she had on hand.

She ran outside, not really looking where she was going in her worry, and ran straight into someone.

“Holy shit!” said a familiar voice, and Dee blinked the black out of her vision to see Kay, her best friend, sitting on the street in front of her, rubbing her chin where Dee’s head had hit her.

“I’m so sorry!” Dee offered Kay a hand up. “I was in a hurry, not watching – Ashley and Emily and Shad and Sara have been kidnapped by Sorcerer Arndt!”

“What? Slow down.” Kay blinked in confusion. “Why?”

Dee bit her lip and shrugged. “I don’t know, but this incredibly weird guy came in and gave me this note.” She passed the note to Kay, but then a thought struck her. “You didn’t see a man in a cloak come running out a minute before me, did you?”

Kay shook her head, reading the note. “Well, this is pretty specific for you. But it doesn’t explain what he wants. Are you going to go fight the sorcerer or something now?”

Dee frowned thoughtfully. “I think…first I could go see if they’re home or if anyone else knows what happened. This could still be some kind of trick. Or a prank, I guess.” She ruefully recalled the times that her friends had filled her room with various pictures or items as a joke.

“I’m coming with,” Kay told her, passing her back the letter. “I’m not gonna let you go fight some evil sorcerer by yourself. Plus, they’re my friends too.”

Dee considered objecting on the grounds that it would probably be dangerous, but honestly Kay’s presence was reassuring. No matter why _she_ was the one who got this letter, she wasn’t going to pull that stupid “I work alone” thing. Better take any help that was offered to her. It was offered for a reason. Besides, Kay had a quarterstaff that she could lay anyone flat with, and she could turn into a dog on command – much more useful skills for this situation than cataloguing books and teaching people to write. She nodded in agreement.

They headed off to the house where Emily, Ashley, and Shad lived, and where Sara could be found much of the time. However, when Dee knocked on the door, no one answered.

“They could be at work, I guess?” Kay suggested. “Or class?” But she didn’t look convinced, and Dee’s stomach twisted as she knew the letter wasn’t lying.

She clenched her fists. How dare the sorcerer steal her friends! They surely hadn’t done anything…well, anything _really_ bad! Although admittedly she could see them pissing off a sorcerer by accident. Or maybe on purpose. Alright, so they probably had done something to him, but that didn’t mean they deserved to be kidnapped!

“We’re going to get them back,” she swore, although she wasn’t sure to whom.

“That’s nice, but from where?” Kay pointed out. “Do you even know where this sorcerer guy lives?”

This was a stumbling block. Dee frowned, until she remembered – “The man in the cloak said something about a castle.”

“Oh, that spooky one down by the river?” Kay said, and Dee nodded. It was the only castle around, after all, and she’d heard rumors of strange noises and lights there recently.

They headed toward the castle. As they approached, the sky seemed strangely dark, even though it was early afternoon, and the air grew cold.

“It certainly lives up to its spooky reputation,” Dee said casually, although she was beginning to get nervous. The castle loomed large and dark in front of them, and cold wind whistled through the bare trees.

Dee and Kay approached the castle cautiously, but nothing happened until they were nearly at the door. Dee moved to push open the heavy wooden door, and as soon as she touched the doorknob, three goblins leapt from the trees, screaming.

Dee jumped back against the door, but Kay twirled her staff and shifted into a fighting stance.

“Go on through!” she said. “I’ll get rid of these guys and follow after.”

Dee hesitated, but then Kay knocked one of the goblins flying and she decided that Kay was much better equipped to handle a situation like this. She pushed open the door, which opened onto blackness. This was disconcerting, but there wasn’t any other obvious way in…

She stepped through and immediately felt a spell grip her. The space twisted around and she briefly seemed to fall before she stumbled forward into the light again. In front of her stood her friends, bickering about something.

Emily was the first to notice her. “Dee! Did he get you too?”

“Uh…no. Not exactly.” Dee tried to orient herself. She was in a small wood-paneled room, with small windows near the ceiling. The single door was also wooden, but much smaller than the front entrance – definitely not the same door. She must have been transported to a different area somehow. “The sorcerer told me to come rescue you.”

She frowned at the group. There was something off about them…

“You all still have your weapons!” she said in disbelief. Ashley was holding a greatsword taller than Dee was, and Shad had a handaxe that he wielded two-handed. Emily and Sara relied mostly on magic, but they each had a dagger as well. “You’re telling me you have weapons, but you still can’t get out?”

Ashley raised her sword and swung it against the wall. Instead of crashing through, it just bounced off, as if it were coated in rubber. “They don’t work.”

“Neither does our magic,” Sara added. “We _were_ kidnapped by a sorcerer, after all.”

The edges of the room seemed to shimmer, and Sara groaned. “Not again.”

“What?” said Dee, as the room grew dark, the shadows creeping up the walls.

“It’s what’s keeping us here. Every time we do something disruptive – “ In the middle of Sara’s sentence, the whole room shivered, and when the shadows retreated, they were in a much longer, narrower room with doors on either end.

“That happens,” Sara finished, looking disgusted.

Dee frowned. “Have you tried just doing it until you found a room with a window or a door outside?”

Ashley shook her head. “All the rooms with windows have bars over them. And we haven’t found a door that leads outside.”

“Plus, we don’t always know what sets it off,” Sara continued. “Usually loud noises do, or hitting something with the weapons, but sometimes just something we say will do it. And there’s no pattern to the room either, at least none I’ve figured out yet. The spell is some kind of transportation spell, but without my magic I can’t tell if it’s set to automatically transport us after we do certain things or if we’re being monitored and just transported whenever the guy feels like doing it. I’m guessing the latter, since one time we got moved after Ashley said that sorcerers were fucking annoying, but…”

Dee nodded along with the explanation. “So…what, we’ve got a mage and a cleric without magic, a fighter without a functional sword, a bard, and a…librarian?” She grimaced as she considered the party. “Not exactly prime for escaping.”

“I’m a rogue!” Shad cried loudly, and everyone around him rolled their eyes.

“He is a bard,” Emily explained quietly to Dee. “But he wants to be a rogue, but there’s no way – “ She winced as Shad stumbled over a vase and yelped. Dee nodded sympathetically.

“Still, we could just try walking around very quietly and see if we can avoid getting transported long enough to get out,” Dee said.

Ashley shrugged. “We’ve tried that and it didn’t really work, but we could try it again.”

“No talking,” Dee commanded. They crept out of the room to one of the doors, which Dee opened slowly. Luckily it was well oiled and didn’t creak. It opened onto a stone hallway with no doors or windows that turned a corner at the end and vanished. It seemed the only way to go, so Dee continued down it, hoping there would be a staircase or door around the corner –

Then she heard a thud and Shad shouting, “Son of a bitch!” and she sighed. So much for that plan.

The hallway shimmered around them and the shadows drew in close and then they were in a different part of the castle again. This time it was a dimly lit, smoky room. Dee coughed and waved the smoke away, her eyes watering.

Someone behind her cackled evilly and she jumped around. Behind her stood a man in a dark cloak.

“Aren’t you…the one who gave me the letter telling me to come here?” she said, squinting at him.

He looked slightly taken aback, and threw the hood of his cloak back, revealing himself to be much less evil-looking than one would expect. “Well. Yes. But I am Sorcerer Arndt, who has trapped you all here with my power

“Why would you bring them right to you when they’ve spent hours here without seeing you?” Dee frowned in confusion.

“Honestly, I was getting kind of bored with them stumbling around and shouting things,” he said, shrugging.

Sara looked deeply offended. “I was working out the system of the spell you were using!”

“There wasn’t really a system,” he admitted. “I was just moving you whenever I felt like it.”

“Then fucking tell us how to get out of here!” Sara snapped.

“Roll for perception,” Sorcerer Arndt hissed.

Dee blinked in confusion at this, but everyone else pulled out their dice and bent down to roll on the ground.

“What?” said Dee. “That’s not how getting information out of someone actually works.”

Everyone else paused in the middle of their rolls and looked up at her, confused.

“Uh, no,” she said. “You don’t need to roll dice to know how successful you are at something. You can just…do it, and rely on yourself. And if you mess it up, you can usually try again. Things in the real world aren’t all dependent on one random roll of the dice.”

“And there you go,” said Sorcerer Arndt. “You’ve learned what I wanted you to learn. Congratulations!”

“What?!”said Sara.

“Bullshit!” said Ashley.

“That’s ridiculous,” Dee snapped. “You can’t manipulate people like that. These are real people, not characters. You can’t kidnap them to make them learn life lessons! That’s illegal!”

The sorcerer looked slightly uncomfortable. “Well. The kidnapping might have had something to do with the fact that they covered the castle in pictures of butts.”

Dee looked over at her friends, who all looked away guiltily. She sighed and shook her head.

“Okay, fine, they’re idiots. Loveable idiots,” she added quickly when Shad opened his mouth to protest. “But being an idiot doesn’t mean you deserve to be kidnapped. If you really wanted to punish them, you should have gone to the police and gotten them written up for vandalism or something.”

“But – I’m an evil sorcerer,” he said uncertainly. “I can’t go to the _police._ ”

“Then maybe you should rethink your career choices,” Sara said acidly.

“And what do you think you’re doing, putting their fate into my hands?” Dee added. “You didn’t know I was going to be able to get them out of here.”

Sorcerer Arndt looked at her with his eyebrows raised. “You were the _only_ one who could have gotten them out of here. Without you to guide them, they’d have spent days wandering around the castle unable to figure out how to get organized enough to get out.”

Dee considered the compliment for a moment, flattered, then frowned again. “But….almost as soon as I got here you just brought us here to see you. I barely had a chance to orient myself, let alone figure out how to get out of here.”

“Yes, well, that’s what _would_ have happened, but – “ The sorcerer looked around nervously as something clattered on the floor in the distance.

A large dog burst into the room, and turned into Kay as it ran toward the group.

 _“There_ you guys are,” Kay panted. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” She turned to Sorcerer Arndt, spinning her staff and pointing it at him menacingly. “And you’d better get outta our way!”

He sighed and waved a hand. The smoke cleared from the room, and a large wooden door – the front entrance – shimmered into place on the wall. “Whatever. Just go, it isn’t worth it anymore,” he said. “And don’t play weird pranks on sorcerers!” he shouted after them as they walked away. Sara gave him an exaggerated eye roll.

The ground outside the door was littered with the bodies of goblins. Sara picked Dee up in a hug and spun her around. “You did it!”

“I didn’t really – “ Dee insisted, but Ashley shook her head.

“Hey, if nothing else you annoyed him enough by pointing out the flaws in his logic to get him to let us go. Seemed like he would’ve kept us in there forever.”

“Yeah, well, next time maybe don’t go pranking evil sorcerers who live in magical castles,” Dee grumbled.

“But we’ll be okay as long as you’re here to save us, right?” Emily pointed out.

Despite herself, Dee found that she felt warm at the praise. Maybe she wasn’t ever going to be the type of hero to burst in with sword drawn to save people, but she could help them out in her own way. Even if that way was a background, librarian sort of way, it was still saving people, and it was still essential.


End file.
